


15 Minutes and the Clock Is Slow

by heidi



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-17
Updated: 2007-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heidi/pseuds/heidi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac's done some paintings that still haven't been made public...</p>
            </blockquote>





	15 Minutes and the Clock Is Slow

Some artists hate looking at their work after they've finished it - there's something they could have done differently, something that could have been rendered with more perfection, a color or a line or an expression that doesn't *work* when the whole thing is complete.

Isaac can't think that way, not in the end. He thinks every stroke he made on canvas and every line in his sketchbook was preordained, and his talent for making something look good was less important than the subject itself.

So he usually doesn't mind looking back on things he painted a month ago or a year ago, at least, not since he realized the purpose of everything.

He has respect for lots of his paintings - the ones of the cheerleader down in Texas, and of Hiro - even the shrunken ones in the comic book - all had a purpose. He may not have had much of one when he first started painting them, but he knows now.

He knows so much more than he'll ever see, and he has so many questions that he'll never be able to answer. Why didn't he paint Simone coming through his door? Why did he spend time on some blonde woman in hysterics and set aside the deaths that should have mattered - Simone's, and even Eden's.

It's okay now, though - he'll see Simone again, and he won't have to see his worst painting come true. He's stretched atop the image of New York in flames now, and almost feels the flames burn into his arms and back, but he'll never know what it feels like to be incinerated by a bomb.

Lucky him.

It's definitely not his favorite, the painting he's going to die on.

The ones he's gone back to, to look at again and again, are the ones he painted and sketched of Simone - in his bed, curled with him on the studio floor, at a club, and sitting with her dad in the hospital before he came home to die.

He'd created all of them more than a year before he ever met her.

They're not the ones he loves most, though.

Oh, no. That exalted position is reserved for a set of five almost photorealistic panels of Peter and Nathan Petrelli.

Those five are in a vault in Queens, and the only key is with his brother in Staten Island. If the portrait of Nathan Petrelli that he painted back in June is really a predictive one - and it might not be, as he painted it sober and may've just painted the face he'd started to see on busses all over New York - then on January 23, 2009, those five will be delivered around Manhattan - three to the networks, one to CNN and one to Angela Petrelli.

He's pretty sure he knows what'll happen then, and he's a little disappointed he won't be around to see Peter be annihalated by the media and the public, and drag his brother down with him.

He knows it'll happen that way, though. Those drawings are in the sketchbook he gave to his courier right before Sylar came to call.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hue & Cry's _Tinsel Show_.


End file.
